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The Garden of Evening Mists
Tan Twan Eng
Novel, 2011
Set in the Cameron Highlands during the Malayan Emergency, it shows the tea-country landscape and the lingering scars of the Japanese occupation.
Books set in Malaysia
Eight books by writers from Malaysia, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with The Garden of Evening Mists and The Harmony Silk Factory.
About the literature of Malaysia
Malaysia's classical heritage includes the Hikayat Hang Tuah, a Malay epic about the warrior Hang Tuah, and the court chronicle Sejarah Melayu, the Malay Annals. In the nineteenth century Abdullah Munshi, often called the father of modern Malay literature, wrote the Hikayat Abdullah, an account of his own life and times. Today Malaysians write in Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil, and the Japanese occupation and the Malayan Emergency recur in much fiction.
Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists is set in the Cameron Highlands tea country during the Emergency. Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory traces a Chinese immigrant's rise in 1940s Perak. Yangsze Choo's The Ghost Bride draws on Peranakan (locally born Chinese) customs in 1890s British Malacca, and Lat's Kampung Boy is a graphic memoir of a 1950s Perak village boyhood.
By writers from Malaysia
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The Harmony Silk Factory
Tash Aw
Novel, 2005
Follows a Chinese immigrant's rise in 1940s Perak, showing colonial-era Malaya, its ethnic mix, and the Japanese invasion.
Evening Is the Whole Day
Preeta Samarasan
Novel, 2008
A Malaysian Indian family's decline in 1980s Ipoh, showing class, race, servants and politics in a provincial Malaysian town.
The Gift of Rain
Tan Twan Eng
Novel, 2007
A half-Chinese, half-English boy in 1930s–40s Penang comes of age under Japanese occupation, with vivid island and colonial society detail.
Green Is the Colour
Lloyd Fernando
Novel, 1993
Set in Kuala Lumpur around the 1969 racial riots, it explores Malaysia's ethnic and religious tensions through a circle of friends.
The Rice Mother
Rani Manicka
Novel, 2002
Follows a Sri Lankan Tamil matriarch and her family from 1930s Malaya through war and its aftermath, in Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur.
The Ghost Bride
Yangsze Choo
Novel, 2013
Set in 1890s British Malacca, it draws on Chinese Peranakan customs, afterlife beliefs, and the colonial town's society.
Kampung Boy
Lat
Graphic novel, 1979
A graphic memoir of a Malay boyhood in a 1950s Perak village, covering rubber tapping, rice fields, and family and village life.
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